This month's book reviews

Sahara Special

Sahara and her father had been close. He had always told her how special she was. So when he left, and then divorced her mother, Sahara was devastated. She got to the place in fourth grade where she no longer responded in school. She not only didn't do her school work, but she wouldn't even talk. She kept scribbling notes to her father asking why he left them and why wouldn't he come back. These notes were collected and filed away in the school office. The counselor in school finally labeled Sahara as needing "special services". When she began fifth grade, she was pulled out of the class each day to receive one-on-one attention from a special needs teacher. So the kids called her "Sahara Special". Of course, Sahara hated it.

The regular fifth grade teacher had quit over the summer. The kids were anxiously waiting to see who their new teacher would be. When she walked in, the kids were astonished. The new teacher had hair that was copper-colored like a penny, but in certain light, it looked green. The hair was wild and held back with sparkling dragonfly barrettes. Her lipstick was eggplant purple and her eye shadow was lime green. Her yellow dress looked like it was made from tissue paper. Her purple bra strap was showing. She looked like a burnt-out punk-rocker teenager!

Her behavior as a teacher was as weird as her appearance. She introduced herself as "Madame Poitier," pronounced PWAH-tee-Yah, and rhyming with the French word touché, meaning "you got me." "Some children call me Miss Pointy, some just call me Madame." She didn't like rules that began with "no." So her rules were, "Yes, looking. Yes, listening. Yes, consideration. Yes, commonsense. Yes, hard work." She described herself as "the meanest teacher in the west."

The schedule Miss Poitier wrote on the board was just as weird as everything else about her. She passed out thick composition books and told them this would be their journals. And, by the way, each of them owed her two dollars for the books. And so went the first day - like no other day in school the kids had ever experienced.

Can Miss Pointy get Sahara to speak up in class? Can she get Sahara to do her schoolwork? Can she get Sahara to do the great writing that she is capable of doing? Can she get Sahara to show that she's not really a "special needs" student? Is Miss Pointy's strange approach to teaching and her "shooting from the hip" going to get her fired before she even gets a good start as the kids' fifth grade teacher? You need to read the book to find out.

 

A middle school girl deals with ridicule
and bullying from her classmates

Maleeka Madison is in the seventh grade at McClenton Middle School. She is having a hard time. It's not because she couldn't be a good student. She always made good grades before. She is especially good in writing and in math. At home, she lives with her mother. Her father left them about a year before and Maleeka's mother took it very hard. Part of the mother's way of dealing with her problems is to spend long hours at the sewing machine making clothes for Maleeka. Unfortunately, her mother is not a very good seamstress. Maleeka wears the clothes to school, but the kids make fun of the way she dresses. Although all the kids are African Americans, they also make fun of her because of her unusually black skin. She tries to fit in by neglecting her schoolwork and appearing to not care about her low grades.

Charlese is a classmate who bullies the other girls around. She controls Maleeka by bringing cool clothes to school that Maleeka can change into before class. Because of the clothes, Maleeka thinks she has to try to be part of Chalese's cliquish group by doing their homework and letting herself be pushed around by them.

Things start to get even worse when a new African American teacher, Miss Saunders, shows up as the kids' English teacher. Miss Saunders wears expensive designer clothes. She is tall with a commanding presence. The story is that she had been a successful business executive, made lots of money, and now wanted to teach inner-city kids. One other thing that set her apart was that she had a large white stain spread across her face. Naturally, the kids started making cruel remarks about her right away. But Miss Saunders didn't seem to care! Above all, Miss Saunders demanded attention in class and placed heavy homework demands on the students. She wouldn't give passing grades for poor performance. She just wasn't going to let Maleeka get by in school doing less than she was capable of doing.

As you might have already guessed, the story describes how Maleeka is pulled first one way by the selfish Charlese and then another way by the demands of Miss Saunders, who just won't take no for an answer. The reader is kept guessing as to who will win out in this struggle, especially after the kids find out that even tough Miss Saunders has some weaknesses that make her vulnerable to their cruel attacks.

 

Have you ever dreamed you
could fly just by thinking about it?

Jonathan Jeffers lived on a island nineteen miles off the coast of California. He lived with his parents in a small red house that stood next to an old brick lighthouse. Jon's dad was in the coastguard and his duty was to be the lighthouse keeper. The family dog, Smacks, was Jon's only companion. The year was 1935.

Jon was bored with his lonely life. He knew all the stories about the ghosts of the 129 Chinese workers who had died when their ship was wrecked there in 1850. They were just some of the 300 or so people who had lost their lives on the reef. The many shipwrecks at that location had led to the building of the lighthouse about 1875.

On clear nights, Jon could see the glow of the lights of the big city on shore. He often wished he could just fly over the water and find adventure in the city. He sometimes put notes in bottles asking for help and threw them into the sea.

One day when Jon and Smacks were roaming around on the beach, they ran across an ancient-looking Chinese man who claimed to be a famous wizard. Eventually, the wizard let himself be talked into showing Jon how to levitate, or raise his body off the ground. The wizard told Jon to practice and soon he would be able to fly, just by using his mind and willing himself to do so. The wizard also warned Jon to never let himself be seen while flying and not to tell anyone else about his new power or he would suffer a terrible punishment.

After surprisingly little practice, Jon was able to soar over the waves and fly about anywhere he pleased. Naturally, he ignored the wizard's warning and on one flight was seen by the sailors on a ship he flew over. The next thing he knew, armed navy men along with FBI agents showed up on the island to take Jon into custody. The authorities were happy that Jon wasn't an alien or a spy, but they insisted he tell his government how he was able to fly.

The U. S. was possibly facing a war in the near future and knowledge of how to fly without a motor would be very useful. Now Jon was really sorry that his wish had come true. He knew he would suffer awful consequences if he told how he had learned to fly. But he could end up in jail if he didn't tell.

Jon's story makes for fun reading. It is especially funny when Jon finds his body wants to fly even when he wants to stay on the ground.

 

An orphan boy in Medieval England
flees from those who would kill him

The boy had simply been called "Asta's son", with Asta being the name of his mother. The people in the small poor village had little to do with him and his mother. He lived in a small hut with a dirt floor and seldom had enough to eat. Although his name was Crispin, he seldom heard his name used. His mother told him his father had died in the plague. Even though his mother could read, she had not taught Crispin to read or write because it appeared she did not want him to stand out in any way. When she died, she left him only a lead cross with some writing on it. At fifteen, he was penniless and alone.

Immediately after his mother died, Crispin was falsely accused of stealing from the manor house. The nobleman who owned all the land had been away in Europe fighting a war. The nobleman's steward, a vicious and cruel man named Aycliffe, led the villagers in a hunt for Crispin, and he encouraged them to kill Crispin on sight. The village priest who had tried to help Crispin was murdered before he was able to tell Crispin who his father really was.

While fleeing and hiding in the forest, Crispin ran into a bear of a man, who had been a soldier at one time. Bear, which he called himself, lived by being a juggler and performing for donations from spectators in villages across the kingdom. Bear took Crispin on as an apprentice and began teaching him not only about performing, but how to fight like a soldier. But even as he tried to make a new life with Bear, Crispin fond that Aycliffe was still hunting for him and intended to kill him. It was only after Crispin found out who his real father was that Aycliffe murderous actions started to make sense.

The novel provides a reader with a real feeling for what it was like to be a peasant in 14th century England. The descriptions of both a rural village and a large bustling town are highly graphic. Of course, Crispin's plight also makes for an exciting and suspense-filled reading experience.